


Eleanor

by cordy



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-11
Updated: 2020-06-11
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:46:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24661027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cordy/pseuds/cordy
Summary: He never knew it was possible to love someone so much when he didn't even know they were there.
Relationships: Rupert Giles/Buffy Summers
Comments: 3
Kudos: 12





	Eleanor

**Author's Note:**

> Post Series AU  
> Giles is head of council, Buffy is running around, everyone else is there somewhere.

It had been seven months since the last time he had seen her, had watched her wheel the suitcase down the concourse at Heathrow and promise that she’d be home soon.

Home was important. It wasn’t that she’d be back soon, but that she’d be home.

It had taken eight years of chasing the darkness around the world before she finally admitted that she was tired and ready to be in one place for longer than a month. It was an easy decision to make, and soon she had settled into a tiny flat in Peckham and a teaching role at the council that had sent the slayers-in-training into an excitable frenzy that never seemed to ease as the months passed and they continued to spar and learn from her.

Then her aunt had died, and she had to fly back to the Midwest to deal with the will and estate which had landed on her after her mother’s passing. Then there was a particularly nasty demon nest to be dealt with in rural Ohio of all places; then a sister bonding trip with Dawn to Australia; then issues with a rogue slayer in Indonesia; then a long stay with Dawn in Barcelona after she broke off her engagement.

Everything had just spiralled out of control and no matter how many times she tried to get back to the life she had begun to carve out for herself in London, another catastrophe seemed to stand in the way. It had been so long that she was starting to doubt whether or not it was a good idea for her to have tried to put roots down in the first place.

But no matter how far away from England she went and how long she was away it didn’t matter. She couldn’t stop thinking about the kiss.

The briefest touch of their lips and the nervous smiles on their faces when they both pulled away made it clear just how long overdue the moment had been. The fire had burned in Giles’ ridiculously lavish South Kensington home and they had just finished off a bottle of wine.

It was a discussion of timing that had caused the evening to transpire the way that it did.

“Imagine if you didn’t make it back to Sunnydale in time to confront Dark Willow in the Magic Box!?”

“Imagine if that first conversation we had about vampires in Sunnydale had happened AFTER Xander had left the library… there would be no Scoobies!? I wouldn’t have survived. I would have had no friends and I’d have resented you so much, Giles!”

He had just laughed at her, stroked her arm and remarked that she was ‘spiralling’ – which she was. Then the conversation had turned to relationships. She had wondered that if he had pursued a serious relationship before he was sent to her if he would have come to Sunnydale with a wife and mini Gileses.

He had turned to face her fully, their knees brushing together on the couch, and had told her that he was sure that any relationship, romantic or not, would pale in comparison to anything they had shared and overcome since they were brought together.

When she replayed the moment in her head, as she often did, Buffy knew that she was the first to lean in, but she also knew that he was right behind her. No declarations were made, just promises that they would speak about this new development in the morning when less wine had been consumed. It had been gentle and tender and the complete opposite of what either had been used to, but it felt nice and safe and they both felt that it was leading somewhere long overdue.

Then she’d been woken at 3am with the news of her aunt, and was on the plane less than 12 hours later.

\--

Every time there was a knock on his front door, Giles imagined it was Buffy returning home, and more often than not he would rush to open it to find a delivery driver or the postman waiting patiently for his signature. He imagined today would be no different, however upon opening the door he was faced with a teenage girl.

‘Hello?’

‘Are you Rupert Giles?’ the girl asked tentatively, holding both hands close to her chest.

‘I am yes…’ he answered slowly, ‘can I help you?’

‘I um… I’m… I was wondering if we could talk please? My name is Eleanor,’ she replied.

He stared at her for a moment, taking in her dark hair, dark skin and the glasses that she began to awkwardly push up her nose. If she wasn’t an exact image of her mother, he knew that he would have recognised her from the countless gossip magazines that Andrew had pushed across his desk in the past few years.

RETIRED MODEL OLIVIA WILLIAMS WITH TECH MOGUL HUBBY JOSE RAMOS AND ANGELIC TEEN DAUGHTER ELEANOR PICTURED IN X PLACE WITH X THING DOING X THING.

He never paid attention to the headlines, but it always made him smile that she had still managed to make them.

‘Oh my,’ he suddenly exclaimed, ‘You’re Olivia’s daughter.’

At the mention of her name, the girl began to sob. She stood shaking on his doorstep for a moment before he realised what was happening. He opened his door and stood back to usher her in, smiling and apologising, though for what he wasn’t sure.

\--

When he hadn’t shown up to the office the next day, Willow had just presumed that he had other business to take care of and didn’t question it with his secretary. On the second day of his absence when his phone began to immediately disconnect his incoming calls, Willow took it upon herself to check in on him at home.

The door was unlocked, a fact that comforted her somewhat, and she found him in the living room, curtains drawn, staring at an assortment of pictures and papers that littered his coffee table.

He didn’t look up when she walked into the room.

‘Um… Giles?’ she tried tentatively, ‘You kind of went AWOL man on us and it made me nervous, but here you are and… what are you looking at? Who is this kid? She’s cuuuuute!’

He looked up slowly and she could see the dark circles forming under his eyes, the shadow from his unshaven face was noticeable in the light that was just peeking through the curtains.

‘Mine.’ he said softly, before running his fingers over the polaroid he held in his hands.

Unsure of how to respond Willow simply nodded, ‘I’m going to make tea for us and then we are going to talk and by ‘we’ I mean you. You are going to talk.’ He nodded slowly, almost robotically before she left the room to busy herself in the kitchen and give him a moment to compose himself.

When Willow returned with two steaming mugs he started the story slowly, with Eleanor on his doorstep and then the story that poured out of her once she was seated in an armchair and the tears had stopped for long enough for her to catch her breath.

Olivia was sick, the breast cancer that she had successfully kept out of the tabloids had rapidly metastasized into her liver and bones, and she was now in hospice care at a private hospital in the city. She had weeks. When she was first moved into the room in the hospice, she had sat Eleanor down and told the fourteen year-old girl stories of monsters and demons that should only exist in children’s books.

She told Eleanor the true nature of her parentage, that she had lied to keep both Eleanor and Giles safe. She didn’t want Ellie mixed up on a Hellmouth and she knew that Giles wouldn’t have been able to support Buffy and be a father. The truth was only now revealed because she didn’t want Ellie to believe she was orphaned so young, but she knew that she was old enough to handle the truth.

He had handed Willow the letter that Olivia had addressed to him, apologising if she had caused him any hurt, but when she had realised she’d fallen pregnant after her visit during the Gentleman incident, she knew that it would never be safe for the baby to be in Giles’ life. She didn’t want him to have to choose between a child he never intended to bring into the world, and his sacred duty.

He had broken down as soon as he finished speaking and Willow had wrapped her arms around him.

Once she had calmed him down and sent him to take a shower, promising that they would work through the next steps of a life with Eleanor in it she had grabbed her phone out of her pocket.

The text she sent only contained ten words:

Buffy he needs you more than ever. Get. Home. Now.


End file.
